In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research by Charis Thompson
  • Stefan Timmermans (bio)
Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research. By Charis Thompson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. Pp. 360. $36.

The core argument of Charis Thompson's Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research is that strong bioethics benefits strong bioscience. The issue at stake is the controversy over human pluripotent stem cell research (PSCR). The Bush administration restricted the procurement of embryonic stem cells in 2001 and put an ethical cordon around the science with bioethical advisory committees. The Obama administration in 2009 partially lifted the restrictions, deploying a different squadron of bioethicists. California passed Proposition 71 in 2004 to allocate $3 billion to stem cell research for ten years. Several countries, especially in Asia, also invested heavily in stem cell research. Practical questions about procurement of embryonic biomaterials morphed into bioethical questions about the value and beginning of human life, who should benefit from the public funding of science, how stem cell research can address health inequities and broader inequities between the wealthy and poor, and what the relationship is between PSCR and disability advocacy and animal rights. While Thompson frames her work as an exploration of the biopolitics, necropolitics, and geopolitics of stem cells, she offers the perspective of a participating bioethicist: a recipient of stem cell funding, participant at national and international meetings, and advocate for women, animals, and disability rights. This is bioethics more in than of PSCR.

The book focuses on the fifteen-year period when PSCR faced heightened bioethical and regulatory scrutiny. Thompson argues that rather than a roadblock to progress, public and bioethical pressure pushed scientists to be innovative, inclusive, and responsive in their science and, iteratively, sharpened bioethical arguments; hence the notion of ethical choreography. Advocates presented PSCR as a pathway to cure with the roadblock of how to procure cells. Thompson instead argues for situating PSCR, especially since it draws on public funding, within a broader agenda of addressing health inequities. Much of the ethical attention to PSCR originated within the U.S. abortion debate, especially the destruction of embryos to create cell lines, but Thompson expands the ethical implications of PSCR. [End Page 503]

At the geopolitical level, Thompson makes research visits to South Korea and Singapore to examine the transnational stratification of stem cells, with U.S. politicians concerned about science brain drains for more permissive countries and medical tourists traveling abroad in hope for a cure. In California, Proposition 71 led to two kinds of public donations: taxpayer funding and donated tissue and cells. Thompson explores in detail the circumstances under which egg donors contributed to PSCR. Most donation of embryo surplus was without compensation, but the model for egg donation was payment. Thompson argues for asking women to donate eggs specifically for research and to implement a mutually beneficial model of reciprocity, where donor anonymity is abandoned but donors remain involved in how their tissue is used. She notes that anonymity can no longer be guaranteed with current genomic technologies and altruism is unrealistic in light of the commercialization of the value chain after donation. In the last chapter, Thompson argues for decommissioning "non-human animals" as substitute research subjects in the name of the "greater moral universe," an interspecies solidarity of subjecthood no longer dependent on rationality. In an era of personalized medicine, stem cells should come from patients or in vitro models.

The book has a nostalgic tone. Thompson recognizes the normalization of PSCR: she starts with the International Bioethics Committee's decision to move on from human cloning to different topics with the understanding that embryonic pluripotent stem cells may no longer be critical for research. Thompson relishes the bioethical intensity of the earlier period and worries that the field may also normalize its ethics and fall back on market models not developed for tissue economies that lose sight of the common good.

The litmus test of any strong bioethics is the difference it makes in science. Thompson is not just analytical but deliberately prescriptive and aims for policy interventions. Therefore, it is fair to ask how she sees bioethics acting in the world...

pdf

Share